Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge (4/1/2012)

For the second day of our field trip for the Natural History class of the University of Washington we visited the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge in Washington. The weather that day was moist, cloudy and mild with small hints of very light showers.

What I learned from my visit at the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge (including observations):
The Nisqually Wildlife Refuge is located at the end of the Nisqually River where it mixes with Puget Sound. The area is a wetland mixed with a riparian forest that has wooden boardwalks and dike trails for visitor convenience. Though there are some graveled trail and also a few lookout areas. During our visit we were focusing on the birds in the area. Some of the birds I observed were Mallard Ducks, a Red-Tailed Hawk (Buteo Jamaicensis), a flock of Canadian Geese (Branta Canadensis), an Osprey (Pandion Haliaetus), and a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias). I noticed that the wildlife in this area seemed to be reasonably comfortable around people as I approached the geese they didn't react to me getting closer and also the red-tailed hawk was perched on a branch fairly close to the boardwalk trial and didn't seem to mind all of us walking by so close. Though most of the geese were in the shallow creek beds as shown in my observation. There were also various tall tree at the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge. The most common trees were the Cottonwood and the big leaf maple. Kate (classmate) also happened to find a Garter Snake (Thamnophis) slithering in the grassland area of the wildlife refuge by the dike pathway (pic tagged). We also spotted a Pacific Tree Frog by one of the look outs as well by the base of a tree. I also noticed that most of the shrub-like plants grew by the creek beds near the boardwalk trails such as the Salmon berry that I took a picture of.

Publicado el 01 de mayo de 2012 por jinam22